When people travel for work or for personal reasons, it is difficult for them to receive their delivered postal mail at their new location and other physically printed documents. They may retrieve their mail upon their return with the potential for missed opportunities, deadlines and the like or employ other available services such as mail forwarding.
Mail forwarding typically involves physical mail that can be forwarded to a new physical address such as by the United States Postal Service (USPS) or other carrier which implements a recipient initiated change of address. Communications such as email can be sent from any location and received at any location on a computer or cell phone. Also, electronic attachments which may reside on an external server or be downloaded to a cell phone can be sent from any location to a computer or cell phone and received at any location by a computer or a cell phone. Moreover, commercial digitized mail process services can scan physical mail and documents and then send them from any location by electronic mail and can be received at any location by a computer or cell phone.
Prior systems have involved, for example, receiving physical documents and scanning the documents to provide digitized electronic images of the material. The digitized image of the material such as postal mail and other documents, hereinafter referred to as mail, are electronically stored and available to the recipient at a remote location via various communication methods between the electronic storage faculty and the user. This involves the user having access to a computer capability which either receives the electronically stored material or an indication of the type of material being stored for access by the user via the user's locally employed computer. The material is received by email or by accessing a remote server where the material is electronically stored. Upon accessing the mail electronically, the user may print the material on a local printer. For example, the user may receive an email with the material attached to the email and thereafter print the material as is common with received emails. The computer is connected to a local printer or a networked printer which is configured for the user's preferences and the material is thereafter printed. For networked printing, the user may have a secure password which is required when the user seeks to print the material at the printer. In such case the file is transferred from the user's computer to the printer where it is stored along with the password or preset password. The user retrieves the printed material upon entering the appropriate password into the printer which enables the printer to print the transferred file.
A commercial service for providing digital mail “dMAIL” is operated by Pitney Bowes Inc. This system is the dMAIL Executive Mail Management Solution service. The service enables users to gain access to scanned and indexed documents from any location within reach of an enterprise network including remote connections from anywhere in the world. Digitizing the mail helps facilitate the delivery of that mail to both home office and offsite. Other services have involved the scanning of incoming mail which is place on disks which disks are then shipped to a location for distribution to the mail recipient. The mail may be scanned into a server that is then immediately available for electronic distribution. The system may make each scanned piece of mail a separate document and allows for sorting, keyword searches and the ability of remote locations to access mail. These services can be services where physical mail is opened, scanned on a scanner and relayed by email to the intended recipient. Alternatively, the recipient may be notified that the email is available for download from the web.
While the above systems provide benefits to mailers and mail recipients, they require access to a computer to be able to receive and thereafter print the electronically stored image of the physical item. Although computers are widely available, computer availability may be a problems while people are traveling or otherwise do not have access to a computer, as for example, employees who travel or work from locations that do not have computer and printer capability. Another example of such problem is access to physical mail during dislocations due to events such as a pandemic or natural catastrophe such as storms or floods. All of the foregoing poses challenges to a virtual workforce and others who need access to mail.
Thus it is a desirable to provide a system and method which enable more flexibility in remotely receiving communications in electronic format and, thereafter, when needed or desired, locating an available printer for printing such electronic communication.